Advent: Anticipating – Waiting with Hope

Advent: Anticipating – Waiting with Hope

The Advent Season. Light the Advent candle one, now the waiting has begun.

I once wrote a post about the difference between waiting and hoping. Waiting to me implies you know the thing is coming. In its time, it is coming. Still hard, still requires patience, but there is a certainty to it. But hope, hope is different. You wait without knowing if that thing will come. You desire it to be, but don’t know if it will be. So your hopes can be dashed.disappointed.cause pain. Hope may come up empty. Or can it?

What does God’s Word say about hope? It says “Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” (Romans 8:24) Biblical hope sounds a lot like waiting. In fact Romans says that we wait with patience for the things hoped for. So what do I hope for? Do I hope for Christ’s return? Do I really hope to be made whole? Do I hope for a more sanctified me? Then wait. With patience. Hope in God cannot ULTIMATELY be dashed, disappointed or cause final pain. He gives us the end of the story. So we wait and hope and wait and hope.

And the Advent season..We await our Saviour’s birth. To remember what He did. To remember how He came into this world and brought HOPE. And we wait and we hope and we wait and we hope for His return, for His Kingdom come.

This is Christ’s gift to the Christian. We wait, but we wait in entirely different way than the world hopes. We wait with hope of His return and His making all things new. He is a good God. He will come again and fulfill the deepest hope of hearts. And the wait will not seem long at all when we behold our Saviour’s face.

Stop making up so many so called rights

I read Ann Voskamp's  link today and it made me clink on the Gloria Steinmen link. I really had no prior knowledge of her other than to equate her name with the word feminist. But reading her got my convictions flowing and boiling like hot lava out of a volcano. I sit dormant with a lot of these thoughts I have because they are controversial, because they offend some of my dearest friends, because I hate conflict. But enough is enough Gloria.

Women's rights, you want to talk about women's rights? I am always amazed that those who  supposedly care so much about me (because I am woman), think that I need freeing because I am part of the "oppressive" conservative party called Republicans. I have no problem admitting the Republican party has some work to do which is evident by the last 2 elections. But my political convictions don't need freeing. I chose to be a conservative. I believe in those values. I believe in less government and letting the private sector grow uninhibited by government, and letting states be states and make their own decisions. Because states are made up of men and women who have opinions and who make choices and they can vote accordingly. So yay for women's rights, thank you that I can vote, but Gloria, will I only have "seen the light" if  I vote exactly as you and your women's groups do?

Sidenote: I always wonder about people that fight for rights that so exclusively benefit them. There are a whole lot of oppressed, downtrodden people in the world and American females aren't real high on that list. There are some real victims out there being denied life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. You care about rights? Go fight for them and their lack of rights.

And then she rants about reproductive rights. What are those anyway? That is such a liberal Western term. The last time I checked, no one had the "right" to control reproduction. It isn't owed to me or due to me to be able to reproduce or stop my reproduction. It is a choice. From the richest to the poorest. Some things in life make that choice harder or easier to make, but it is still a choice. No one owes me sex without consequence,  condoms, or birth control, or getting pregnant, or a uterus that will  successfully carry a healthy baby if I want it to.  If people would stop believing and demanding that they had so many rights, they might focus on their choices a little bit more. Here comes the conservative in me, call me crazy, but the only real rights I think I was given being born an American are the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. So guess what, if sex makes me happy, I can have it. No law against it. If I want to buy condoms or birth control because not being pregnant and having sex makes me happy, I can make the choice to buy it. If I want to have IVF and Chlomid available to me to increase my chances at having a baby if I am struggling, I can either work at making enough money to afford those things or I can work for company that covers that in my health insurance. But it isn't a right due to me.

America, we have got to get out of this mindset that we have so many rights, so many things being owed to us. It is such an immature way to live. We sound like toddlers yelling, "He got a new toy and I didn't, it's not fair!" Nobody likes whiners. So stop. Start making choices that get you closer to what you want, and live with the reality that life isn't fair. I voted for Romney. That was a choice that would get me closer to the America I wanted. But it didn't happen. I had to live with the reality that sometimes we don't get what we want. That was never promised to any of us.

Smile Makers

HOW DO YOU BE WHO YOU AIN’T?

HOW DO YOU BE WHO YOU AIN’T?

How do you be who you ain’t?  You find yourself in this other life. Someone else’s. Is this what it is to be in the wilderness? Living what feels like another’s life? What about the one that was etched on your heart. How do you find that one? Or was the etching really just cutting? Was it a wounding so deep that the only thing that would cover would be scar tissue heaped high? So high that the heart is now safely buried from the cutting?

Or is it etching? Do you dare hope that it is the etching? Because the Bible says hope does not dissapoint. But thus far, hope has dissapointed. Again and again. And persevering hope takes courage and time with no guarantees. You don’t have to hope for what you know you will get. You just have to wait. But hoping is harder than waiting. There is no promise. Just your truest desire, raw and exposed, that etching on your heart….that continual slow bleed. And it can only stay hope if you let it bleed a little each day. If you let your vulnerabilities drip out of your heart with the truest fully oxygenated life-blood there is.

Because if you don’t…the scar tissue comes. Even without asking for it. It just comes and it buries your heart and hopes and it keeps it beating, but it has no oxygen, no life-blood to course through your veins. It just makes you someone else.

And you realize you are really are living someone else’s life.  Without hope or help. Dead blood making your scarred heart beat someone else’s rhythm. And you are still in the wilderness.

Wouldn’t your rather bleed your own true blood instead of living someone else’s life?

The Greatest Lesson of My 20's...my experience must not be the basis of my theology.

Soren Kierkegaard and Martin Lloyd Jones new this and taught it well. The following article is a helpful piece on this topic: http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/tgc/2012/11/07/when-biography-shapes-theology/

Soren Kierkegaard

Martin Lloyd Jones

Wheaton....Sweet Memories, Sweet Friends

In early October, I made a trip to Wheaton, Illinois for Wheaton College Homecoming and to see many of my dearest friends that I don't get to see very often. One of my favorite moments was coffee and dessert at Honey in Glen Elyn with Sarah Aulie, Erin Hoekstra and myself. It was a culmination of my favorite things about Wheaton. Here I was connecting two of my dearest friends for Christ and His Kingdom. The Notre Dame MBA student was giving the Executive Director of Hand and Cloth (a nonprofit that provides diginified work to women in the developing world) business advice. We could have all talked for hours. I love being the connector; it's one of the things I do best!:) And the unexpected run in with Hannah and Chloe; such an unexpected gift!!!! And then of course there was dear Celeste, my constant hostess who makes her home my home, even with 2 children under the age of 3. Thank you Celeste!!

Thank You For This Jennifer Dukes Lee

"Good theology doesn’t evaporate — even if faith gets bruised — because truth is still truth. God has still very much got it." "If it rains, or if it doesn’t rain, God still reigns.